Con nombre propio. José Luis Turina / With a name of his own. José Luis Turina

by Ismael G. Cabral

(Interview published in issue 400 of Scherzo magazine, November 2023)



The Madrid-born composer José Luis Turina (1952) is experiencing both the satisfaction and the responsibility this season of exposing himself creatively before the audience of the National Center for Musical Diffusion (CNDM), which has chosen him as its composer-in-residence. Awarded the National Music Prize and a member of a generation that began to take music creation down less militant paths than those traveled by the members of the "Generation of '51", the composer (who also has an extensive career as a cultural manager) will be portrayed in various concerts, presenting a collection of scores spanning more than three decades of music. Quoting Tomás Marco, "the history of Spanish music has room for two Turinas of the highest caliber".

How did you approach the residency offered this season by the CNDM?
From the very first conversations, the rapport with its director Francisco Lorenzo was absolute, which was crucial to arriving at the final programming; and it was not easy at all, because there were many works, soloists, groups, and dates to coordinate. He first wanted to know which works I was particularly interested in having performed, and almost all of them have been included in the program. Among these was a premiere that is very important to me, the string quartet Bach in excelsis, composed in 2016 for the Cuarteto Quiroga. And then, of course, we sought variety among the different chamber groups, which will allow for a good overview of that part of my catalog, which is the most extensive. A total of 17 works have been programmed, which represents approximately 10% of my output, spread across 11 concerts.

Can we then say that someone unfamiliar with your career could get a clear idea of it by listening to the music that will be performed?
The journey spans 33 years, which is the time between Punto de órgano from 1990 and the piece I will compose this coming fall for the Kebyart saxophone quartet, which still doesn't have a title. This journey will not include the music written during the first twelve years of my career, but the music of the subsequent thirty-three years is logically more mature, and the selection of the 17 scores that will be performed will allow for a very accurate approximation of my way of composing. Or, to put it more precisely, my ways of composing, since my music is not easily classifiable, as it encompasses a wide range of techniques and aesthetics. As an important part of my work involves arranging, transcribing, or adapting works by other composers -even sometimes on a large scale, such as the reduced orchestra version of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"), commissioned by the Spanish National Orchestra- one of the two commissions I have received from the CDMC as composer-in-residence is an arrangement for voice and chamber ensemble of a suite of Lieder by Alexander von Zemlinsky.

In the proposed program, we find works in the form of quartets, scherzos, tributes, and a sonata. What do classical forms continue to contribute to your work?
I need to clarify that the title of some works (like Scherzo, Trio, Sonata or Quintet) is one thing, and quite another is whether they adhere to the forms developed in Classicism and Romanticism for those ensembles. I greatly enjoy playing with tradition, without which nothing we do would make any sense, and that's why I sometimes use classical forms in my works; but that doesn't mean that just because a piece is titled Sonata, the formal framework has to be the conventional structure associated with that name. In that sense, perhaps the most traditional aspect of my music is the frequent use of classical instrumental groupings -like the piano duo and trio, the string quartet...-, for which I have composed a good number of works.

You previously mentioned your early work Punto de órgano. Do you feel equally comfortable when turning your attention back to the Turina of decades past?
Between the oldest and the most recent works, it's natural to prefer the latter, because they belong to a period of greater aesthetic maturity and technical assurance. But of course, works are composed to be played and heard, and once "released", it's usually very difficult to make them disappear, even if that's what one might want after a few years if one's ideas have changed and one doesn't wish to be remembered for the thoughts held when young… That said, after 45 years of an active professional life, it's understandable that I'm not equally satisfied with everything I've written: some works have turned out better than others, or have come together more cohesively, or are more resistant to the passage of time. In any case, I've always believed that every artist composes, throughout their life, a single work that is constructed chapter by chapter, and whose final result is never fully satisfactory to its creator, even if it may seem so to the listener, reader or viewer.

In the presentation of your residency, you placed special emphasis on the significance of the piano pieces that Josu de Solaun will perform. Could you expand on that?
What I said during that presentation was that if I had to highlight one of the various scheduled concerts, it would be the recital by pianist Josu de Solaun, because it will be the first time that the three pieces constituting my Homage to Isaac Albéniz will be performed in a single concert. These pieces emerged in a very independent manner and over a considerable span of time. My intention was to recreate the formal structure of most of the pieces in the Iberia Suite. This scattered creative process is the reason why the performance of all three in a single concert, interspersed with three pieces from Iberia, holds such special appeal for me. However, there are other works in the residency's program that also excite me greatly. I'm referring to those that I composed, were premiered, and have never been performed again: the Sonata for Violin and Piano from 2004; Viaggio di Parnaso for piano trio from 2005; and He was waiting for me to leave from 1995, which was a music-hall scene for soprano, saxophone, and chamber group that was part of the show La raya en el agua.

The symphonic/orchestral aspect has been left out. And paradoxically, given that we were just talking about classical forms, the symphony genre has not (so far) entered your catalog. Why is that?
The CNDM doesn't have the capability to take on and organize symphonic concerts. But to answer your question, and just as I mentioned earlier about works whose titles refer to classical forms, it's true that none of my orchestral works are titled Symphony. There's no particular reason other than I simply prefer the names I've given them. If anything, the piece that comes closest to a conventional symphony is Ocnos (Music for Orchestra on Poems by Luis Cernuda), for reciter, cello and orchestra, with which I won the Reina Sofía Prize from the Ferrer Salat Foundation in 1986. In any case, I don't feel any lingering regret in that regard, nor do I think I'll ever compose a Symphony that's named as such, or has that word as part of the title.

Two of the ensembles that will be performing your music, the Divertimento Ensemble and Trio Catch, have extensive experience in interpreting contemporary music. What would you say are the main challenges your music poses to performers?
The Divertimento Ensemble will perform Scherzo para un hobbit in Milan this coming November, a piece for a small chamber ensemble that has undergone various transformations to adapt it to different ensembles. It's a relatively straightforward work whose playful character fits perfectly with the group's name. On the other hand, El Túmulo de la mariposa from 1991, for clarinet, cello, and piano, which will be performed by Trio Catch, is extremely challenging, both due to the demanding nature of each instrument's part and the formal complexity, where rigorously written sections alternate with others that are completely free, almost improvisational. In any case, these two works summarize well the answer to your question, as both pieces encapsulate the most notable characteristics of my music: great technical difficulty -but never against the instrument or the performer- always in service of music where structure and expression are closely intertwined.

Speaking of the Divertimento Ensemble, which is closely associated with Franco Donatoni, one of your teachers. What memories do you have of him, and how much of his music is present in your own language?
The Divertimento Ensemble concert will take place in the Donatoni Hall of the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. My acquaintance with Donatoni dates back to 1980. I not only attended all the classes he gave during those months, but whenever he traveled to Rome from Milan, he would stay for two days every two weeks at the Spanish Academy, given his long-standing friendship with its then-director, Federico Sopeña. And now, more than forty years later, I have to admit that I gained more from the conversations we had over breakfast and lunch at the Academy than from the actual content of the classes, as I quickly realized that, despite choosing Rome to further my studies with him, neither his teachings nor the atmosphere in the classes fully convinced me. Fortunately, I didn't have to leave Rome to find what I was looking for, because during my time there, I had the opportunity to discover the music of Salvatore Sciarrino -whom I knew nothing about at the time-, and his work undoubtedly became the most influential on me as a composer. This influence is easily traceable in the works I wrote during that year and the following ones. In fact, Sciarrino's impressive timbral richness and the plasticity of the images he created through it inspired me to make a radical shift in my composing style: to use an illustrative analogy, in my few earlier works, broad gestures were common, drawn with a broad brush, and from that moment on, those same gestures retained their breadth and direction but were executed through atomized writing, painted with a fine brush, like a miniaturist.

Although you have often denied any influence of your famous composer ancestor on your work, the truth is that, compared to some of your contemporaries, your music tends to be more lyrical or musical in a fully modernist but non-exploratory sense. Could this not be a reflection of a certain sense of responsibility tied to your surname, a substratum of the inherited legacy?
In my generation, as well as the one before it and especially the one that followed, composers of very different aesthetic tendencies have coexisted peacefully. The radicalism of the 1950s and 1960s is far behind us, and in my view, it makes little sense to reclaim it today; that doesn't mean I'm not very interested in trends that are far removed from my own, but I wouldn't feel comfortable within them. My music seeks clear expressiveness that sometimes requires a certain lyricism to manifest, but I would certainly reject the notion that this is due to any kind of genetic, and much less aesthetic, inheritance. Joaquín Turina was a great composer, and I am very proud to bear his surname, although in my early days as a composer, it was both a key and a burden. In any case, the legacy I inherit as his descendant has only meant continuous work on his oeuvre throughout my professional life. My inclination toward lyricism, as your question suggests, is also the consequence of a vital need to embrace, in one way or another, the tradition in which our culture is embedded, always giving it a contemporary treatment and never renouncing it. Because of my late vocation, I came to the world of composition at the dawn of postmodernity, when the avant-garde was beginning to stagnate. This has always allowed me a generational independence (those of my age had been composing for years when I started, and they had already digested integral serialism and its consequences, and I didn't feel identified with the younger ones), which, combined with being able to make a living through other music-related activities, has allowed me to choose what I wanted to write at any given moment; that's why my work is so diverse and surely so bewildering for any scholar.

In your career, cultural management has been another significant endeavor. Has it enriched or, on the contrary, hindered the projection of your music?
I can't say for sure that my music would have had more exposure if I had devoted myself exclusively to composing, but I sincerely doubt that would have been the case. What is certain is that I would have written more, but I'm not entirely sure that would have been better.